Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Troll's Guide To Madness, Part 7

If you haven’t signed up yet, pacatrue is hosting a Yahoo Pick ’Em March Madness contest. Yahoo’s paying $5 million to anyone who picks a perfect bracket. You only have until tomorrow before tip-off to get in. The play-in game (which I picked correctly) is already history, but it doesn’t count toward your official picks, so you still have time.

First the bad news. The odds of picking a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That's nine quintillion and change. You have a better chance of doing just about anything else imaginable, such as winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, and finding a politician who isn't full of shit, all on the same day. What’s worse, even though most of your March Madness office pools use some kind of point system to determine the winner, odds are you'll screw up a first or second round game, which will throw off your entire bracket, and you'll be kissing your twenty bucks goodbye. The good news is that by the time this whole thing shakes out, the dollar will have been devalued even more, so it'll be like only losing seventeen, and with that extra three bucks you can almost buy a gallon of gas. See? There’s always a silver lining.

I was glad everyone said they were going with their own picks. I didn’t actually think anyone would use mine, but it’s nice to know there are at least five people out there who still think for themselves. I was really just trying to see if I could sound as authoritative as the rest of these clowns who do this for a living. In the past year, I’ve watched a total of 30 minutes of college basketball, and 20 of those were the second half of last year’s championship game between Ohio State and Florida. I think I’ve mentioned before that college basketball sucks.

Incidentally, my favorite authoritative clown of all time is not a sports analyst, but William Gray of Colorado State University who every year makes predictions about how many hurricanes will form and strike the US, and then revises his picks every three weeks until the beginning of November when everyone is so relieved their lives weren’t destroyed that they forget how totally wrong the jerkoff was. Why anyone still listens to him and his staff is beyond me. Professor Gray ranks slightly above the idiot clown Jim Cramer of CNBC only because Cramer is on TV every day, and anyone with half a brain can see he’s a lunatic. Unfortunately, those with less than half a brain continue to base their financial futures on his ego trips.

By the way, any of you lurkers (and I know who you are) planning to use my picks to enter and win the $5 million, it’ll be UCLA over North Carolina 86-79 in the championship game on April 7th. My fee is a modest 33%.

Okay, no more college basketball. Next week we’ll talk about something that really matters: roller coasters!

6 comments:

Sarah Laurenson said...

I never thought basketball could be so much fun. Thansk for the commentaries and the explanations. Hilarious!

PJD said...

You actually sound far more authoritative than the clowns on TV.

It occurs to me that the whole college basketball viewing experience might be improved if it was narrated by the personalities of HGTV. They do a great job with the Tournament of Roses Parade every year. I almost wish they'd then follow that up with an HGTV broadcast of the Rose Bowl game.

Robin S. said...

I love you for your humorous authority, BT.

Kinda like a sports version of EE.

McKoala said...

If anyone uses your picks it'll be half a million each anyway. Assuming you have the confidence to use your own picks, of course, and that's a whole other matter...

McKoala said...

Half a five million that is. I think I lost my brain today. Check out Chris's blog for another crass and stupid error.

My son wants me to enter 'Are you smarter than a fifth grader?', but obviously it would just be too humiliating for all.

Wonderwood said...

Alright, my picks are in. Sorry to the Xavier fans out there, but I consulted the Gods and it turns out Georgia has one more game of magic left in them, but they'll fall to Purdue in the second round. I can't wait to check out everyone's brackets tomorrow, it should be interesting. I hope everyone can stay pretty tight through the first two rounds, it'll make it more fun next week. Let the games begin.